No Protesters, but Beijing Police Sweep Streets of Bystanders, Journalists

By Jeremiah Jenne[JF note: I spent the afternoon in Beijing on the far east side of town interviewing an industrialist on another topic. Jeremiah Jenne, nearing the end of an excellent run as a guest blogger this week, went to the Wangfujing area downtown to witness the second of the "Jasmine" protests in China. His report:]

BEIJING, China -- Overseas organizers once again called for demonstrations in China over the weekend, but as was the case last Sunday, few if any protesters in Beijing heeded the call, leaving only a massive
security presence that quickly turned its attention on
foreign journalists there to cover the planned protest.
The Beijing Municipal Government also unveiled its latest secret
weapon against unrest: a fleet of street cleaning vehicles*
which rolled down Wangfujing, the designated protest site in central Beijing, hosing down
the pavement and clearing the main avenue before parking in front of the local KFC.

(The KFC had been rumored to be an alternative protest site,
as the original venue, a McDonald's located about 100 yards away, was cordoned
off on Friday by blue construction fencing and "road repair" signs.)

While effective, the Chinese government didn't leave crowd
control solely in the hands of the Department of Public Works. I was there for an hour and I haven't seen
that many police in one place since the Olympics in 2008.

Most of the cops seemed alternately bored and annoyed, and with
little else to do they started clashing with the other group well-represented
this afternoon: the foreign press corps.

One foreign journalist was assaulted by plainclothes officers and there were numerous smaller scuffles. This evening, French journalist Jordan Pouille reported on twitter that he had been arrested, and while at the station saw at least seven other journalists who had also been taken into custody.

There were other testy standoffs as police asked random foreigners for "their papers," physically restrained people from
entering or leaving the area in front of the KFC and McDonald's, and temporarily barricaded the south entrance to the street.

I personally witnessed three plain clothes officers roughly
shoving a female foreign correspondent for about 10-15 yards. Photographers and TV crews were particularly
at risk, as the site of a camera drew an immediate and harsh response from the
police.

If there were any people actually planning to protest, they
didn't carry through on it and frankly I can understand why: A person would have
lasted longer lathering up with baby seal blubber and trying to French kiss a great white shark than they would have holding up a sign in Central Beijing this
afternoon.

But that doesn't mean the government isn't concerned.

Today's response was larger, better organized, and better coordinated
than last Sunday. Multiple levels of
state security were involved, from local public safety volunteers to police dogs, plainclothes agents, and trucks of SWAT/riot control
parked a few blocks away just in case.
Even China Mobile, the state-owned telecommunications company which operates the largest mobile
network in the country, was involved. GPRS/3G Internet access was
unavailable in a two-block radius around Wangfujing this afternoon, although
normal mobile phone and messaging services were unaffected.

If anything today, it was that the government that tipped its hand. There were no protests. So I'm left to wonder: Without the 300 or so police patrolling two city blocks and the week-long harassment of activists, dissidents, and foreign
journalists - where's the story here? Rather, this has become the latest in a long line of incidents in which the government overreacted at the possibility of negative news coming out of China only to have the official response become the story.

As I wrote last week, no matter how much
discontent continues to grow in China, the lack of a coherent opposition and the threat of
a swift and brutal reprisal by the state against any form of organized dissent,
means that there is little chance of North African-style mass demonstrations
happening in Beijing, at least for the foreseeable future.

In a live web-chat scheduled -- coincidentally enough -- for
Sunday morning, Chinese premier Wen Jiabao told netizens, "The purpose
of our economic development is to meet the people's growing material and
cultural needs, and make the lives of commoners better and better."

In another piece I wrote this week comparing the end of the
Qing Dynasty with the situation today, I argued that despite all the
differences, the Chinese Communist Party faces a dilemma that would have been familiar to the princes of the Qing court: The knowledge that there are serious systemic problems that can only be
solved by making hard choices which may, one day, ultimately erode their
monopoly on power.

Will the Party fulfill Wen's promise, or will it have
to resort to even larger displays of force in the future to maintain social stability?

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James Fallows is a staff writer for The Atlantic and has written for the magazine since the late 1970s. He has reported extensively from outside the United States and once worked as President Carter's chief speechwriter. He and his wife, Deborah Fallows, are the authors of the new book Our Towns: A 100,000-Mile Journey Into the Heart of America, which has been a New York Times best seller and is the basis of a forthcoming HBO documentary.